Business Insider predicts bad solar weather this week, after a solar flare knocked out radio signals in parts of Asia and Australia. The U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center reported the solar flare peaked on April 17, followed minutes later by a massive sun eruption known as a coronal mass ejection, Space.com reported. "A pulse of X-rays from the flare produced a strong shortwave radio blackout over southeast Asia and Australia," said NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which recorded the X1-class solar flare, the strongest types of storms on the sun. "Mariners, aviators, and ham radio operators may have noticed unusual propagation effects at frequencies below 30 MHz." The good news is that the coronal mass ejection's trajectory will miss Earth, passing behind our planet in its orbit around the sun, Spaceweather.com reported. Powerful solar storms can alter the Earth's northern lights displays and wreak havoc on satellites and astronauts in orbit, as well as radio transmissions. The sun is currently in an increasingly active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle.

Elle Kehres reports for Radio World that the Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association, which is the union for broadcast tower climbers, and Storybuilt Media are releasing a feature-length documentary “Vertical Freedom,” about six communications infrastructure workers in the United States. Ky Nguyen is featured in the film, and said he had no experience before joining the industry. “I started as a climber and then just kept working my way up,” he said. “Then I became foreman and began project managing. I’m one of those types of guys where, if you want it done a certain way, you have to be with them, showing them, leading by example – so I’m climbing every day.” In 2012, a PBS Frontline documentary called "Cell Tower Deaths" reported that in the previous decade nearly 100 climbers were killed on radio, TV, and cell towers, a rate that is about 10 times the average for construction workers. The latest death was in December of Michael Vasquez, working for Broken Arrow Communications, when he fell from a communications tower in Arlington, WA. This industry documentary does not focus on those deaths and accidents, but hints at the issue. “The turnover rate is pretty crazy because not everyone can do it,” said Nguyen in "Vertical Freedom." “It takes a special type of crazy, a certain type of person, to want to be up that high working and traveling on the road. You know, you sacrifice not being home.”

Adi Robertson reports for The Verge that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been fought with tanks, planes, ships, and humans, and also with radio waves, as a battle of information over the internet, television, and radio. And while the U.S. has banned selling almost anything to Russia, a few radio-related products are now allowed for export to Russia to help in the information war. The US Department of the Treasury is exempting telecommunications services from the sanctions against Russia. Advocacy groups for anti-war protesters inside Russia predicted that blocking internet services would cut off Russian activists’ access to the outside world. So the Department of the Treasury is allowing "services, software, hardware, or technology incident to the exchange of communications over the internet, such as instant messaging, videoconferencing, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos, movies, and documents, web browsing, blogging, web hosting, and domain name registration services." Access Now, one of the group's advocating for Russian activists, applauded the decision. “U.S. internet communication technologies are key for human rights defenders and independent media to report on and fight Russian and Belarusian governments’ aggression in Ukraine,” said the group's tech legal counsel Natalia Krapiva. Internet backbone providers Lumen and Cogent and Mailchimp operator Intuit ended their service in Russia before the sanctions were approved. Slack only blocked access from Russia after the sanctions hit. The Ukraine government has asked for more than it has gotten so far. Ukraine wanted DNS overseer ICANN to revoke Russia's access to the Domain Name System, but was turned down. ICANN said a revocation, blocking Russia from the rest of the world, could have “devastating and permanent effects on the trust and utility of this global system.” The Russian government has not been acting in kind, as they have been blocking major global services such as Facebook and Instagram in a wide-ranging crackdown on free speech of any kind. Read more about this story at The Verge.

Paul Revoir reports for The Daily Mail that the British Broadcasting Corporation has another so-called "slow radio" production in the works that is a field recording reality show. "Honey – A Day In The Life Of A Dog" will air in July on the BBC's Radio 3 using "carefully placed" microphones so that "the essence of Honey is captured as we are gently enveloped in the noises she both makes and hears." Honey is a fox-red labrador. The BBC recently began airing what they call "slow television," which has included a BBC4 show of a two-hour bus ride through Yorkshire and canal journey on a narrowboat. For what they call "slow radio" the BBC's Radio 3 has aired a show on the "all-consuming silence" of a walk along the coast of Greenland, and Benedictine Monks in the "silence of the monastery." On Saturday, April 30, Wave Farm airs some "slow radio" on WGXC with SoundCamp's ninth iteration of "Reveil," a collective production by streamers at listening points around the earth. Starting on the morning of Saturday 30 April in South London near the Greenwich Meridian, the broadcast will pick up feeds one by one, tracking the sunrise west from microphone to microphone, following daybreak around the earth for 24 hours.

Randy J. Stone reports in Radio World that the Federal Communications Commission is thinking about reinventing the Emergency Alert System. Listeners mostly hear tests of the Emergency Alert System on televisions and radios, that open with a long static-filled tone and say that "in the event of an actual emergency" important information would be relayed. The system is mostly used as a warning for hazardous weather events, interrupting programming on all stations in the affected area. The system began in 1997, primarily to allow the President of the United States to address the country via all radio and television stations in the event of a national emergency, but has never been used for anything other than regional weather warnings. The emergency messages come in four parts: a digitally encoded Specific Area Message Encoding header, an attention signal, an audio announcement, and a digitally encoded end-of-message marker. So while listeners only understand the words or messages, computers are hearing other information. Some stations in each market get the initial warning message, and the other stations get the message from that station through the digital codes. Now, though, many Americans do not get all their immediate information from over-the-air transmissions. Many hear new from online digital sources. A second system, the Common Alerting Protocol, has been set up for digital sources, and the FCC is now asking broadcasters if they can all switch to that system, and integrate it somehow into analog radio and television. This is a behind-the-scenes debate, and whatever the result will probably sound the same to listeners and viewers in the future, if the mandate for a messaging system remains. It might now, since it is not really needed for national emergency, when every channel would be covering every moment of a president's words without any mandate.

There has been much reporting about the propaganda posing as news that is being broadcast to the Russian people about the invasion of Ukraine. Russian journalists can't use the word "war," and instead must call it a special military operation. The war crimes of Russian soldiers are both actually being committed by the Ukrainians and also are actors playing roles rather than dead bodies according to Russian broadcasts hosts. But there has not been as much reported about the Russian propaganda being broadcast on airwaves in the United States. Russian propaganda is a bit harder to find on U.S. television and radio since the war began, but it is still there. Tucker Carlson continues to parrot Russian talking points on his Fox News show. RT, the English-language news network based in Moscow and funded by the Kremlin, was dropped from YouTube and American cable franchises in early March as the war began. Most of the content from RT America seems to have been erased from the internet since the start of the invasion Feb. 24. But there are still five outlets of “Radio Sputnik” in the United States right now, airing content produced in Moscow and Washington under the Russian government’s supervision. One is WZHF (1390-AM), broadcasting near Washington D.C. The station is now forced to interrupt its programming of talk every hour to air a disclaimer: “This radio programming is distributed by RM Broadcasting on behalf of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, Moscow, Russia. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.” The disclaimer is because of a Federal Communications Commission rule that went into effect March 15. The rule was in the works long before the war, forcing U.S. broadcasters to disclose any programming provided by foreign governmental entities. Rossiya Segodnya means Russia Today, the same Kremlin-controlled media agency that directed RT and RT America. The European Union banned Radio Sputnik after Russia invaded Ukraine. KCXL in Liberty, Missouri is another station airing Radio Sputnik programming and Peter Schartel, who runs the station, says he and his wife are being accused of treason. He argues that he's promoting free speech by airing falsehoods about Russia's invasion in Ukraine. Schartel is paid $5,000 a month to air the propaganda near Kansas City. The National Association of Broadcasters on March 1 called on station owners to stop carrying Russian state-sponsored programming. “While the First Amendment protects freedom of speech ... it does not prevent private actors from exercising sound, moral judgment,” NAB chief executive Curtis LeGeyt said in a statement. “Our nation must stand fully united against misinformation and for freedom and democracy across the globe.”

WBEZ reports that a Chicago man who ran an AM pirate station while in high school in Milwaukee during the Vietnam War, now is running an FM pirate radio station in Chicago playing audio noir radio dramas from the 1940s. "Bill," last name only to avoid the wrath of the Federal Communications Commission, has a 50-watt transmitter in his upstairs apartment with an antenna on the roof. “People on the lakefront up in the high rises can hear it,” said Bill. “And they used to listen at Lane Tech somewhere on an upper floor. So it gets out a little ways, but not that far.” The clandestine DJ plays old audio dramas not because of his love for old-time radio, but because he suffers from insomnia, and the old radio plays help put him to sleep. In 2006 he started an internet station, audionoir.com, and now the former audio engineer simulcasts on 87.9-FM. “I already had equipment,” said Bill, 68. “And I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got nothing else to do with this stuff— I’ll transmit this.' I guess I do enjoy [being] the bad-boy nerd, broadcasting illegally." His high school AM station get a visit from Federal Communications Commission officials to his parents’ home. Later, in college in Wisconsin, "Bill" helped found WORT. That background has him currently broadcasting on a frequency that is not being used in that part of Chicago. "Bill" says he will stop his FM transmissions if the FCC shuts him down, but he would not mind more pirate broadcasters in Chicago. “I think it would be exciting….You would have a lot of different content, from religious to political to old time radio to music,” he said. Read more about this story at WBEZ.

Matthew Yglesias reports for Bloomberg that in September 2020, political scientists David Broockman of the University of California at Berkeley and Joshua Kalla of Yale paid viewers of Fox News to watch CNN for a month, and found the change altered their political views. The folks switching from Fox to CNN were then surveyed, and were found to be five percentage points more likely to believe that people suffer from long COVID-19 and six points more likely to believe that many foreign countries did a better job than America in controlling the virus. Those paid to watch CNN instead of Fox were seven points more likely to support voting by mail than the regular Fox-viewing control group. And those paid to watch CNN instead of Fox News were 13 points less likely to agree that if Biden were elected, “we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists,” than the regular Fox News viewers. A seven-point increase in supporting voting by mail may seem like a lot, but only 24 percent of the CNN switchers in total said they supported voting by mail. Of course, the viewers only watched CNN for one month, so there could have been greater deviations if the channels stayed changed. Read more about this story at Bloomberg News.

Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine is not just a war of people and weapons, but of radio waves. In early February Russia began by bombing TV towers and attacking internet services. Then a major story in the war was that Russian troops were using unencrypted signals to communicate. Here is an excerpt of a New York Times report on intercepting Russian war transmissions. Click here to download or play excerpt. On April 7 Der Spiegel magazine reported that German intelligence intercepted radio exchanges between Russian soldiers who discussed killing civilians outside Kyiv, possible further evidence of Russian war crimes. In one conversation recorded by the Germans, a Russian soldier claims he shot and killed a cyclist. In another, a Russian soldier can be heard saying that bystanders should initially be questioned, then shot. And the information war is also taking place outside of Ukraine. The British Broadcasting Corporation in early March restarted restarted broadcasts on two shortwave radio frequencies – 15735 kHz and 5875 kHz – with their World Service news in English that can be received clearly in Kyiv and parts of Russia. The BBC had stopped broadcasting to Europe on shortwave frequencies in 2008. Now, though, the BBC’s Russian language news website's weekly audience has more than tripled since the invasion began, with a record 10.7 million people in early March compared to a usual average of 3.1 million. Radio Miami International is also beaming all sorts of signals into the conflict, providing news that is not allowed to be heard otherwise in Russia, and may be difficult to receive otherwise with the infrastructure damage in Ukraine. WTWW in Lubbock, Texas is also beaming music and information into the area. “I got a friend in the Ukraine that I’ve been emailing back and forth with and corresponding with and he loves Creedence Clearwater Revival,” said Dan Collins from the station. “He loves it. I mean, he’s a big fan. It’s just kind of cool to be able to entertain the folks and also put some things in that they may not know. We have listeners in Russia. They don’t get the truth. They’ll never get the truth, but they can’t stop us. That’s the beauty of it.”

Free speech seems like an endangered concept these days. The right wants to stop teachers from talking about many subjects with students, and ban books they do not agree with. The left is trying to quash a growing trend of racist political speech. Neither side is happy, and radio hosts, who talk for a living, are being fired for what they say. There are two recent radio firings in the news. Last week a radio host in Kazakhstan was fired after she wrote on Facebook, "we will call in Uncle Vova if you talk too much." Uncle Vova is Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who has ordered an invasion of Ukraine complete with mounting cases of war crimes with horrific attacks against civilians. Kazakhstan shares a large border with Russia, and partners with the country on many economic issues. The Europa Plus Kazakhstan radio station fired host Lyubov Panova after the comment. With a large Russian population, and rumors that Russia could invade Kazakhstan, any talk about Putin there is bound to be controversial, and it is understandable why a host supporting Putin might cause a radio station to let them go. In the United States, that's not the case, as Tucker Carlson almost nightly says things in support of Putin on Fox News. But WMAL, near Washington D.C., fired a host last week for posting a photo of Vice-President Kamala Harris wearing the color brown in a Tweet that read, "Kamala looks like a UPS employee — what can brown do for you? Nothing good, apparently.” Right-wing commentators have decried the decision as against the First Amendment, which is silly, since the government did not fire the host, and businesses can fire people in this country for what they post on social media. Amber Athey, the host, said owners of the station Cumulus Media, told her the Tweet was racist when they let her go. But she might have been fired for more than just one Tweet. The New York Post reports that after the UPS Tweet Athey “spoke critically of protests in favor of ‘trans kids’ at the University of North Texas” — and, as she wrote, “a group of maniacal left-wing activists who want to chemically castrate children in the name of ‘gender affirmation’ came after me.” Cumulus Media officials have yet to talk about the issue in the media.

Inside Radio reports that it is five months since President Joe Biden nominated Gigi Sohn for the fifth commissioners seat on the Federal Communications Commission. Republicans have blocked the nomination so far, with a Senate Commerce Committee vote last month tied 14-14. That leaves the FCC commissioners in a 2-2 deadlock, meaning little can be done in the radio regulator's office. Democrats need a motion to discharge from the Senate Majority Leader in order have a vote scheduled in the full body. Then all 50 Democrats would have to be present to get a 50-50 vote, which Vice-President Kamala Harris could break. But Democrats are more concerned about Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson then Sohn. Republicans oppose Sohn's position on broadband net neutrality (Sohn favors making sure Amazon and Google get the same bandwidth as someone's personal website, an even playing field for all). They also say her past work for the now-closed television streaming service Locast should disqualify her from becoming an FCC commissioner. Sohn has said she would recuse herself from matters involving retransmission consent or television broadcast copyright for the first three years of her term. “Why on Earth should we choose a commissioner who would have to recuse herself from participating in substantial parts of the FCC's work? How does it serve Americans to have an FCC Commissioner who can't fully do her job,” said Republican South Dakota Senator John Thune. “Surely, there are other qualified nominees who don't have Ms. Sohn's conflict of interest.” The Media and Democracy Project, a progressive lobbying group, says, “She represents a tie-breaking fifth vote at an FCC that must create a more just, equitable and diverse media system,” claiming media companies of “trying to undermine” her nomination to avoid regulation. Read more about this story at Inside Radio.

Tom Vernon reports for Radio World that AM or FM radio stations are still the number one sounds in cars. The Infinite Dial 2022‘s survey of in-car media listening found 73 percent of people listen to the radio in their cars, while 53 percent listen to their own digital music or sounds, 35 percent use a CD player, 32 percent listen to online audio or subscribable audio, and 22 percent listen to satellite radio. The AM/FM listening numbers fell sharply during the pandemic, from 81 percent in 2020 to 75 percent in 2021. At home, though, 39 percent of those surveyed say they do not have a radio. And that grows to 57 percent for those age 12-34. Edison Research conducted the national telephone survey of 1502 people aged 12 and older, using random digit dialing techniques to both cell phones and landlines in January 2022. Read more about this story for Radio World.

Margaret Hartmann reports at New York Magazine that 66 people sent complaints to the Federal Communication Commission regarding ABC's telecast of the Oscars which included a physical and verbal attack by actor Will Smith on comedian Chris Rock. Those complaining said they were “traumatized,” “offended,” “triggered,” and “shaken” by the attack. “I haven’t been able to sleep as a result. My child was also scared. I had to take medicine to calm me down,” one anonymous viewer wrote to the FCC. “I thought your agency was supposed to keep this type of violence and cursing off television. I hope you can bring sense and reason back to the public airways,” another wrote. ABC did keep Smith's profanity off the airwaves, cutting to silence while viewers in Japan and Australia heard the entire encounter. After the 2004 Super Bowl, where Janet Jackson's nipple was exposed at halftime, the FCC received 540,000 complaints. Read more about this story at New York Magazine.

Matt Schudel reports in the Washington Post that Bill Fries, an advertising executive with a unique history in one form of radio, died from cancer at the age of 93 on April 1. Under his stage name C.W. McCall, Fries hit number one on the pop charts in 1976 with the song "Convoy," the most famous musical ode to citizens band radio. Fries first created the character C.W. McCall as a truck driver in a series of commercials for a Midwestern bread company. Then he had top 20 country hits with “Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep On-a-Truckin’ Cafe” and “Wolf Creek Pass,” both songs about truck driving. Then his song “Convoy,” an odd ode to breaking the law on the nation's highways told through CB radio, knocked the Bay City Rollers’ “Saturday Night” off the top of the Billboard pop chart in January 1976. The song was a CB radio conversation between Rubber Duck and Pig Pen, the CB radio handles of two truckers, and filled with the lingo and code words of citizens band radio of the era. “It was timely,” Fries told the Associated Press in 1990. “Back in 1975-76, that craze was sweeping the country. The jargon was colorful, and the American public liked that, too. It was laced with humor, but it had a rebellious feeling about it and people responded to it.” “Convoy” sold about seven million copies and inspired Sam Peckinpah’s 1978 film of the same name, starring Kris Kristoffersen. “Well, mercy sakes, good buddy, we gonna back on outta here,” C.W. McCall says at the end of “Convoy,” with a slight alteration of a trucker’s farewell: “Keep the bugs off your glass and the bears off your … tail.” Read more about this story in the Washington Post.